Tabs in groups erroneously show '+' icon.

[GWHAYWOOD]

This morning I came across a new issue (new to me at least, and I didn't see it when I browsed the existing issues).

One of the three windows that I normally leave open has about two dozen groups of tabs and a few ungrouped tabs.

Most of the groups contain between ten and fifty tabs.

When I switced to that window this morning:

1. all the groups were expanded
2. the colourations of the groups appeared normal
3. the groups appeared (erroneously) 'flattened'
4. every tab in a group showed at its left the little '+' icon which normally means "expand this collapsed group"
5. clicking any of the '+' icons in the group removed all of the '+' icons in the group (but not those in other groups) and reverted the group to its expected un-flattened state
6. repeating the process for every group restored the tab groupings to normal
7. while the group was incorrectly showing multiple '+' icons on an expanded group, the menuu option to expand the group was not available from the menu accessible by 'right-click-tab' -> 'Tab Kit'.
8. The tabs in the other two windows were seemingly not affected by this issue.

This is Palemoon 29.4.1 (64 bit) on Linux (Debian 'Buster', 10.11).
The browser has not been restarted since installation of the patched version 0.14.0 of Tab Kit 2 (see #197).
The only other extensions installed are uBlock Origin 1.16.4.30 and Session Manager 0.8.1.14 (which I do not use).
Adblock Latitude was installed years ago but has been disabled for years (since installing uBlock Origin).

[PikachuEXE]

I have never used multiple windows myself, but I guess I am not a heavy Palemoon user these days (using Vivaldi now).
But since not all windows are affected I am ruling out having multiple window from potential cause of this issue.

I do suggesting you restarting it often or at least don't keep browser opened for too long (unless you got tons of RAM).

Would it be possible to create a new window and copy one small tab group to that window and see if it ever happens again? And continue doing that until any window except the reported one got the same issue too.
This is not a fix but a test/workaround. There might be some corrupted data/state in the window you reported. Who knows :S

[GWHAYWOOD]

Thanks for the feedback.

I do not want to restart the browser very often because it breaks all my tab groups every time. However, because of all the issues I have been considering a change in the way I work, and an extra window (or possibly several extra windows) was a part of the thinking. My idea is to have a window for each major group of tabs, and I hope that this will minimize the aggravation when groups get damaged. The breakage does not seem to overflow from one window to another, so at least I hope not to need to pick my way through several hundred tabs to regroup them every time I restart the browser.

I do not know if adding more windows will cause more problems than it solves but I will try it. I did briefly try another tab manager (Tab Groups Manager reloaded 1.0.1) but it was hopeless. It took all afternoon to group a few hundred tabs. The browser performance vanished down some plughole and it failed to shut down after four hours waiting for it to respond. Eventually I had to kill the process. When I restarted it, all its tab groups had disappeared. :(

I re-enabled TabKit2 and the tab groups came back like magic - give or take the grouping jumble cause by #197. I've created a fourth window, with one group plus a few ungrouped tabs, for experiment. I do not know how to copy tabs from one window to another, but since you used bold face for the word perhaps you will tell me what I need to do because it must be important. For the moment I moved some tabs from my old window 2 to my new window 4 by drag and drop. Sixty tabs in one group, plus five ungrouped tabs. (I had to count them longhand - about the only thing that I miss from "Tab Groups Manager reloaded" is the tab count.)

[PikachuEXE]

I said copy so that you can observe if the issue exists on the tab group or the window.

There might be some corrupted data/state in the window you reported.

I guess that should be There might be some corrupted data/state in the window/tabs you reported

For me I save tab groups into bookmark folders as backup.
It does not save the parent child relationship but better than no backup.

[GWHAYWOOD]

But I do not know how to COPY.

[PikachuEXE]

Oh ya
For cleanest "copy" I would say (for one tab group)
for each top level tab:

• Copy URL
• Open new tab in the new/another window
• Paste and visit

Not sure how to "copy" the indentation level though...

[GWHAYWOOD]

New information: today I accidentally searched using the "Search Tabs" box and immediately all tabs in the window showed the incorrect '+' icon. I accidentally searched for the lower case letter 'c' and then backspaced over it and searched for a single 'space', all without realizing that I was typing in the search box.

Almost all of the tab groups were collapsed at the time.

I do not know for sure which of the two searches triggered the fault, but I think it was the second. At least I did not notice the fault until after the second search.

[GWHAYWOOD]

Seems fairly repeatable that searching for a single space causes this issue, just tried it in four different windows and it did the same thing in all of them.

[PikachuEXE]

Busy this week
Will investigate next week

[PikachuEXE]

I am unable to reproduce by entering 1-N spaces in search bar

[GWHAYWOOD]

Looks like there's some other condition needed to trigger this one. It seems to happen only very occasionally, we'll just have to wait until it pops up again and hope that I can remember/discover something useful when it does.